Brewing at IIT-Kharagpur, future fuel from wastewater

​Scientists at IIT-Kharagpur are already turning the next-gen ideas into reality. The ministry of renewable energy is funding the entire project and has already published the pioneering research in its publication.Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey | TNN | December 11, 2016, 11:41 IST

KOLKATA: Cars running on hydrogen fuel derived from industrial wastewater. Electricity generated from bio hydrogen lighting up homes.Sounds far-fetched? Not exactly, scientists at IIT-Kharagpur are already turning these next-gen ideas into reality. At a time when fossil fuel reserves are fast depleting and the focus is towards developing alternative energy sources, this is music to the government's ears.

The ministry of renewable energy is funding the entire project and has already published the pioneering research in its publication, Akshay Urja. The innovative work has also been published in respected international journals like Elsevier and have since been copied and circulated among online scientific research platforms.

According to the researchers, 95% of the commercially produced hydrogen now comes from carbon-containing raw materials, primarily fossils. However, the conventional production processes are highly energy intensive and not always environmentally benign.

The researchers at IIT-Kharagpur are generating the gas from distillery wastewater.

This process will have a two-pronged effect: hydrogen production and bioremediation of the waste water, said Debabrata Das, faculty of the biotechnology department, who is leading the research. A bioreactor with a 10 meter cube volume has been installed at IIT Kharagpur to produce hydrogen continuously from distillery effluent. “This gas can also be used in the fuel cell directly to generate 52kwh of electricity that can light up an entire village,“ Das said.

“Hydrogen is found to be suitable as a fuel in vehicles and all major automobile companies are in competing to build hydrogen fuel automobiles in the near future. The humnngous rise in energy consumption by 2030 would require an alternative fuel resource with highest energy density . Hydrogen fulfils this criterion. Hydrogen is being considered as a `fuel for the future' because it has the highest energy density of 143kJg,“ Das explained.

The ministry of renewable energy in its “National Hydro gen Energy Road Map“ has projected that by 2020, one million hydrogen-fuelled vehicles would be on Indian roads and 1,000MW of hydrogen-based power generating capacity would be set up in the country. It has entrusted IIT Kharagpur with the responsibility of reaching that goal as soon as possible.

Subscribe to our Newsletters

The ongoing field development and EOR/IOR projects are expected to produce a cumulative of 54.6 million tonne (mt) of crude oil and 114 billion cubic meter (bcm) of natural gas in the next three to four years, the report said.